Voter fraud will become “more brazen” with Attorney General Eric Holder in office because the Justice Department aims to block states and local governments from enforcing the law that’s been on the books for decades, Cleta Mitchell, president of the Republican National Lawyers’ Convention, told Newsmax.TV in an exclusive interview.
Mitchell said Holder’s policies emboldens vote scheming, which, she points out, is a felony.
“I think they get more and more brazen and because they know that Eric Holder, the Attorney General, rather than trying to enforce federal laws that would protect us from voter crimes, Eric Holder and his Justice Department have done just the opposite,” she said.
“They have tried to block states and local governments from enforcing the law that we have operated on for decades. I mean it’s illegal. It’s a felony under federal law for someone to register to vote or to vote if you’re not a citizen. But instead of enforcing that law, the Justice Department under Eric Holder is suing the state of Florida to keep them from enforcing it. So that’s why I think that that emboldens those who would concoct schemes to have illegal votes cast.”
Mitchell’s group has been working for several years to help states “adopt procedures and laws that will guard against voter fraud,” she said.
“The liberals say, ‘Oh there’s no voter fraud,’ Mitchell said. “I would invite anyone to come to the website of the Republican National Lawyers’ Association, just Google ‘Republican lawyers’ and we have a map that shows all of the cases of voter fraud. There are about a dozen that were added in August.”
“And we’ve been promoting and defending voter identification laws, and, in fact, yesterday the Supreme Court of Minnesota upheld that legislative referendum so people in Minnesota will be able to vote this fall to implement photo ID to vote,” she said.
“So we’ve been working hard on that and now we are recruiting lawyers to serve as volunteers, as poll watchers, as election officials, to try to make sure that the bad guys don’t steal the election.”
Turning to the convention, Mitchell, who is chair of the American Conservative Union Foundation, said the platform for the GOP is “very conservative.”
“What it really does is it affirms the Republican Party’s commitment to fiscal responsibility, a strong national defense and a number of other things, a commitment to life and traditional marriage,” she said.
“It’s really a Ronald Reagan platform. But it does have some new things in it this year. For the first time the Republican Party is calling for the full repeal of McCain-Feingold, which is the campaign finance law that has been in effect for ten years.”
Mitchell said there is work to be done on undoing McCain-Feingold to “rebalance the equation.”
“McCain-Feingold was passed in 2002 by a Republican-controlled Congress and signed by a Republican president,” she said. “… But what’s happened over the ten years that McCain-Feingold has been in effect is what we’ve seen is the courts have ruled that … that half of the law that restricted the free speech rights of independent organizations, third party groups, citizens, organizations that are not candidates, they’re not parties, and the Supreme Court has said, ‘Well, it’s unconstitutional to try to restrict their free speech rights.’”
“What the Court has not undone and which Congress needs to undo is the other half of the law, which puts strict limits on what political parties can do, how they can raise money, what they can do in coordination with their nominees, and all the kinds of restrictions. So what happens is the balance of power shifting to organizations and individuals, super PACs, we’ve heard about the super PACs and 501(c)(4) organizations. They’re the ones who are getting unrestricted money and able to speak freely and the candidates, the political parties cannot. It’s crazy. So we need to rebalance the equation,” she said.
Mitchell said the GOP reflects many tea party principles and she is happy to see that.
“I really did not think that the American people would rise up in the way that they rose up in the spring of 2009 to fight back about the debt, the spending, the stimulus, Obamacare,” she said.
“I saw people, including people in my own family, who had never been political before ever, who stood up and went to the capital, who wrote letters, who organized. It was wonderful to watch and I think the platform of the Republican Party now reflects a lot of those tea party principles, which is wonderful.”
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